Kneading dough can be a messy business, getting flour all over your kitchen counter and bits of dough stuck all over your hands. It is very satisfying work, of course, but there are times when you just don’t want to get dough all over the place and there are some doughs that are so sticky that they make kneading by hand very difficult. These situations are when something like Dough Gloves come in handy, since they can make kneading dough a less-messy affair. The gloves are made of thick nylon and are thoroughly dusted with flour before you stick your hands into your dough. The flour sticks to the gloves (unlike flour that you rub on your fingers) and prevents the dough from sticking to the gloves – allowing you to knead a dough more easily and cleanly. The other bonus of using gloves like these is that you won’t need to add as much extra flour to your dough. Anyone who has handled sticky dough can tell you that the primary reason to add extra flour is to keep it from sticking to your hands. Less added flour, particularly for very wet/slack doughs, will result in a better textured loaf at the end of the bread-making process.

The only drawback to these is that they come in one size to fit all hands, which means that if you have very large hands or very small hands, you might have a little difficulty fitting these properly. You also lose a little of the fun of squishing dough between your fingers, but that may not be such a bad thing when you don’t have to scrap dried dough bits off your fingers later, either.